University Daily Kansan
Friday, April 20, 1979
3
Theo Hamilton
Staff photo by BARB KINNEY
Theo Hamilton looks to Olympics
If Theo Hamilton broke the long jump world record at the Kansas Relays, he wouldn't get so much as a slip of paper for his efforts.
By BLAKE GUMPRECHT
Sports Writer
He'd probably get a few handsakes and a write-up in Track and Field News. But Hamilton isn't eligible for the long jump title at the Relays.
"It will just be another exhibition," he says.
The 1975 NCAA Indoor long jump champion's last year of college eligibility was four years ago, his final year at Texas. And the long jump isn't an open event.
But Hamilton, an assistant women's track coach at KU and a member of the Kansas Athletic Hall of Fame, has more important things in mind.
"THE 1989 OLYMPICS," he says. "That is my big goal right now."
Three years ago, Hamilton finished fourth in the Olympic trials for the 1976 Montreal games. Only the top three make the team.
"It felt great the day I finished fourth," he recalls. "But the next day, it was like a bomb landed on me. I realized I'd come alone to making the Olympic team."
"So I set out from then on to make the 1980 team. I think I have an excellent chance."
Hamilton's best beat at the 76 trials was 29.4, seven inches behind third place RICHAEL KLEIN.
"I KNOW I can make the team in '80."
Hamilton says, "Those three guys will be the main competition, and I've beaten all of them except Robinson.
"Besides, in 76, I really wasn't in the type of shape I like to be in."
Hamilton decided to take a little vacation from jumping after the trials. In fact, he didn't compete again until this year, a bluster of more than three years.
Arnue Robinson, the gold-medal winner at Montreal, and Larry Myricks also finished ahead of Hamilton with jumps of more than 27 feet.
That's when he started helping out with the women's program.
"I figured to compete and to try to coach at the same time would be hard to do," he says. "So I decided to take a couple years off to give myself time to get my head together. I had always planned on jumping again."
IT WASN'T UNTI. a few months ago that Hamilton decided it was time to resume training. His first two jumps, the KU indoor meet, were just under 25 feet.
But at February's AAU meet in New York City, he jumped 26-6, which earned him third place. That jump also qualified for the RSRE meet last month in Fort Worth, Texas.
It was at that meet that Hamilton astonished the track world by defeating the two best long jumpers the Soviets had to offer. The same two Soviet jumps had
finished one-two in the European Indoor Championships.
"That surprised a lot of people," Hamilton said of the 21-10-4 leap, his third best ever. "That helped me get my foot in the door."
"THAT'S PROBABLY the fourth or fifth best jump in the world this year. But I think it was pretty mediocre. I'm still in the process of getting in shape."
Hamilton says it will take a jump of about 22 feet to make the U.S. squad for the Indianapolis 500.
Hamilton's jumps seem unimpossible with his pre-career in Birmingham, Ala. The former college freshman tipped Jefferson State, a junior college in his hometown that didn't even have a long name.
"I'm pushing for the mid-27's," he says. "I'd like to get to the point where I'm consistent at 27 feet. Then I can worry about the 28- and 29-foot jump. If I get consistent at 27 feet, I'll have no trouble at all."
But somehow Hamilton won the national junior college long jump championship both indors and outdoors his last year at UCLA. He also performed performance earned him a KU scholarship.
Hamilton has the best indoor long jump in Kansas history. That came at the 1975 NCAA Indoor in Detroit when he jumped 26-7-4.
"Taking two years off really helped me mentally. Now I have a lot of pice. I'm not having the problems with fooling. I just worry about getting a good jump."
Coaches split on stamping foreign visas
RvGENEMYERS
Snorts Writer
The site is Eugene, Ore, and the year is 1976. Track and field's best have gathered here to see their Olympic dreams realized in the U.S. Olympic Trials.
Featured in this elite group of Olympic hopefuls are 21 athletes who have ties with the University of Kansas, one of the country's most powerful track schools. In contrast, there is a single athlete from the University of AlF4 Passing the Olympic dream.
It would be logical to assume that Kansas had more success in the NCAA meets leading to the 1976 Olympic Trials at Boston. But, ironically, this was hardly the case.
Actually, the answer isn't all that surprising. UTEP did have a number of athletes in the Montreal Olympics; they were not competing for the United States.
They were foreigners competing for their home nations.
UTEP has achieved its success in the '70s by scouting the plains and mountains of Africa and signing the world's best foreign talent.
Recruiting the foreign athlete has clearly paid off for the UTEP Miners, who have won four of the past six NCAA Indoor Championships and the NCAA Outdoor in 1975.
"IT'S TERRIBLY frustrating if you're not going to recruit foreign athletes and we're not," KU track coach Bob Timmons said. "We have more Olympic athletes, but we're having a heck of a time keeping up with them in national meets."
UTEP, however, is not the only school cashing in on the foreign recruiting bonanza. In fact, foreign recruiting has been a significant trend in college, to collegiate track for the past fifteen to twenty years.
The UTEP team this season is made up of three Swedes, one Dutchman, one Englishman, one Mexican, two Norwegians, two Frenchmen and one South African, one Tanzanian and 10 Americans.
"UTEP AND Washington State precipitated the great numbers with the success they've had," Bob Teel, Missouri seven-year head track coach, said of his foreign athletes. "There are schools dealing almost entirely in foreign athletes.
"It's been there all the time but all of a sudden it started increasing and it's really getting worse."
This season, half of the Big Eight teams have at least one foreign athlete on their roster. The team that plays in Nebraska has foreigners and Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma and Oklahoma.
When schools and coaches talk of recruiting the foreign athlete, they fall into one of three categories. There are schools such as Kansas that will not recruit any foreign athletes; teams such as Missouri that will recruit the foreign athlete right out of school, and squads such as UTEP that will recruit a foreign athlete regardless of age.
"I'M NOT FOR it at all." Timmons, one of the Big Eight's更高称的辩护ers, said.
"I believe in the old United States and I'm not anti-foreigner either. We've had several athletes on our teams who were not born in America, but we've trained through grade school and high school here."
"Foreign athletes have contributed to the achievements of American athletes, but you can't divorce yourself from the fact that funds have diminished. The percentage of financial aid given to U.S. students is growing and more is given to foreign athletes.
"I know other teams are just trying to win and within the rules they're doing right, but this is destroying our programs. My feeling is that we're out of the rights of American citizens first."
BUT NEBRAKAS' head track coach, Frank Sevigue, strongly disagrees. Sevigue has been the Cormuskers mentor for the season and will now be the foreigners on his squads. This year's team has four Jamaicans and one Kenyan, including Ray Mahoney, the Big Eight Indoor
"To summarize the whole situation," Sevigne says, "the big gripe today is not having foreigners on your team, but the fact that they are cruising the 26 and 27-year-old superstars.
"By and large, I recruit the athlete right out of high school, but if I choose a chance to play, I'll go."
Even though Teel doesn't have any older runners on his Missouri team, he knows the added benefits of having a 25-year running long distances against a 20-year
"THE OVER-AGE Distance runner is always going to rattle others," Teel said, "especially when you realize that distance you don't reach their peak until 23 or older."
Teel's Missouri squad, which edged KU and Nebraska for the Big Eight Indoor Title in February, has seven foreigners, all of whom are from Nigeria. They accounted for 31, excluding relics, of Missouri's 91 points in the Big Eight Indoor. Ajai Agbekeba twined indoor triple and long jump champ. Udo, former 400 tallist, lead this group.
Timmons was alluding to UTEP's brilliant 25-year-old Tandem Suleiman Nyambu, who is expected to play freshman this season, he has already doubled in the mile and two-mile at the NCAA Indoor Championships, a feat matched only by Kansas' Jim Rynn and Bradley
"We may bring in a kid," Timmons said, and "if he is good, he may be thinking Olympics but that's down the road. Now he's an Olympic star. He has already been to two Olympic games."
"ON THE AVERAGE it takes the high school graduate three to four years to compete at the national level, but when they get there they're wiped out by a freshman."
Timmons, too, knows all the advantages of older distance runners.
The introduction of the older distance runner is relatively new to collegiate track. The NCAA had rules regulating this practice, but they have been outgrown in court.
The situation now, in a nutshell, goes
An athlete is allotted four years of eligibility.
back to about six years ago," Sevigne said.
"The NCAA and Big Eight had an age limit on foreign athletes. Each year a student was allowed to count as a of the variety competition.
"BUT A FEW years back, Howard University won the NCAA soccer title with a few foreign athletes who were later declared ineligible." Sevengan said. "The
recruiting locally, then nationally and then internationally if needed."
Teeel and Oklahoma's head track coach J.D. Martin believe that the foreign athlete actually plays a vital role in equalizing and overcoming recruiting liabilities.
"I hope I don't have to do it," Martin said of recruiting foreigners, "but I'm not going to put my foot in my mouth and say that I'll never do it."
"It's terribly frustrating if you're not going to recruit foreign athletes and we're not . . . We have more Olympic athletes, but we're having a heck of a time keeping up with them in national meets."
NCAA stripped them of their title, and Howard took the NCAA to court and won.
"That threw the door open to recruiting the established foreign stars."
According to Dan Morrison, assistant track coach at Colorado and former assistant at Nebraska, the NCAA forced many teams to turn to foreign talent after reducing the number of track scholarships an institution could give from 24 to 14.
"With just 14 scholarships that means the quality of the person you initially contact must be much higher," Morrall said. "You can go after an outstanding athlete here, and you can get a scholarship, or choose choices to only six schools. Then you've got one in six shot at getting him."
"BUT WHEN YOU GO to the out-of a foreign athlete wants to come to the country, you
Colorado has never been a major recruiting center for foreign athletes, even though it usually has had one or two on the team since the 1960s.
"I wouldn't call this a major express ground for foreign athletes," Morran said. "Every one or two years we have one dotting the landscape. Our first priority is
Teel said he turned to foreign talent to help out the Missouri program.
"IF WE GET to the point where we're no longer competitive we'll have to do it."
"I've made two or three observations over the years about the situation," Teel said. "It's obvious there are those who are pursists—and Bob Timmons is a purist—who know the problems. The most vocal anti-foreign athletics coaches have answers that others don't have."
"For example, we're not a recruiting center with accessibility to the best national athlete, so we stand at a big disadvantage. When you don't normally have the resources to pursue across the United States to get the great athletes, you have to look elsewhere."
MARTIN, WHO also doubles as the Sooner women's head coach, said recruiting the Sooner team is important.
"I just happened to be overseas a summers ago," Martin said, "and it was just so easy. You just go up to the foreign athlete and ask if he would like to go to
"Women's athletics usually follows the pattern of men's athletics, especially in track and field," Anderson said, "but we'll help develop the U.S. talent instead."
Martin said that a poor track reputation and recruitment position forced him to go after foreign talent to help OU's track program. He also said he hoped to phase it
KU does have a junior college transfer, Linda Newell, who is from London.
"Even though I've travelled abroad, we're one of the feet that haven't recruited us."
"Oklahoma has almost zero girls with the quality to compete in the Big Eight," he said. "You can't rely on recruiting seven or eight blue chip athletes of Oklahoma, and without those blue chips you can't have a quality team."
"WE NEEDED to also recruit from Kansas or Texas or any other state, but we didn't have a reputation and the resources. We needed to build our program somehow, and we were able to pick up a few foreign girls to help build our reputation.
"Now that we have a reputation, we can recruit the athletes from other states. After
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"We're just defeating ourselves," he said, "Everyone who doesn't know better sees the great times produced on the collegiate level, and we want to make sure we're in the world of track and field.
"WHEN WE WERE at nationalists, it felt like we were the foreigners. It was hard to believe it was a national championship. I felt like we were the minority."
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"Oklahoma is dominated by foreign talent," Anderson said. "They've come right out and said that no one is good enough for them in the United States and that they have to go to other countries. I think that's just a crummy attitude.
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Timmons said he hoped other coaches would realize the major role foreign recruiting played in the United States' fading Olympic track domination.
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"Then the Olympics come and look who's the best. It's not the United States. The way we do it."
The consensus of Big Eight coaches is that the trend of recruiting foreign athletes will continue and grow, to the dismay of some, of puff of others, but to the indifference of none.
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Oklahoma leads the Big Eight women's track ranks with the most foreign athletes, a fact that annoys Teri Anderson, KU women's track coach.
"If it could be done, I would prefer not to see the foreign athletes participating in the national meets, but then what is our national team?" It actually is the AAU and not the NCAA."
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"At the nationals, I heard of a survey that said 15 percent of the teams had one or more foreign athletes so I guess that means most are in favor of it," he said. "But in the future we'll see fewer of the ready-made Olympic athletes and more of those right out of high school." The latter is too many more good older athletes in Europe and the mountains of Africa."
TEELECHOED Bergan's prediction.
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Is the trend toward foreign athletes going to continue? Iowa State head track coach Bill Bergan, who has five foreigners on his team, said he is in yes in some respects and no in others.
each year, one of our recruits graduates and we recruit wolf and forager foxes."
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